Drew Hutchison #36 of the Toronto Blue Jays salutes the fans as he is relieved in the eighth inning during MLB game action against the Oakland Athletics on August 11, 2015 at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
The fact that Marcus Stroman appears to have amazing restorative capabilities is both exhilarating and terrifying to the Toronto Blue Jays at the same time.
The 24-year-old pitcher was given medical clearance to pitch on Tuesday for the first time after undergoing surgery in March to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee that he injured during spring training.
By all accounts, Stroman's test drive, which occurred at the Blue Jays' spring training facility in Dunedin, Fla., went so well that the Blue Jays are now of the mindset that a September return might not be so farfetched.
That is not a bad turnaround in a span of about five months for a player that the Blue Jays originally felt would be lost for the entirety of the season.
The normal recovery period for such an injury is seven months.
"Right now, he'll be stretched out to start," Toronto general manager Alex Anthopoulos told a Vancouver sports talk radio station on Tuesday afternoon. "We'll see how many innings we can get out of him assuming no setbacks. Minor league season's over on the 7th of September, and we'll see how much he's built up by then, and hopefully no setbacks at all.
"I know there's been talk about reliever/starter. If he's totally healthy, our plan is to bring him back as a starter."
If everything goes to script, Stroman's return for the final month of the season could be a huge lift for a Blue Jays outfit on the verge of ending 21 years of playoff futility.
The hottest team in baseball continued its relentless pursuit of the New York Yankees for first place in the American League East on Tuesday night, crafting a 4-2 victory over the bumbling Oakland A's at Rogers Centre.
It was the ninth-straight victory for the Blue Jays (62-52) in the first of a three-game set for a team that came into the day trailing the front-running Yankees by just 11/2 games.
After Drew Hutchison, the struggling Toronto starter, surrendered a run to Oakland in the first inning, the Blue Jays fought back in the second, scoring three to take a 3-1 lead.
The A's were the master of their own misfortune, committing two infield errors that helped the Toronto cause.
In the fifth, Jose Bautista crunched his 27th home run of the season to left to make it 4-1 and the Blue Jays made it stand up.
Hutchison has been inconsistent this season and has benefited immensely from the 8.08 runs of support a game that he has been blessed with, the highest total among all major league hurlers.
Tuesday night Hutchison was mostly masterful, going 7-plus innings, allowing two runs off four hits and was afforded a standing ovation as he left the playing field.
Roberto Osuna worked the ninth for his 11th save.
The second game will go Wednesday night with the Blue Jays altering their pitching plans with Mark Buehrle, who was scheduled to take the mound, flipping his start with R.A. Dickey.
Buehrle, who was sore coming out of his last start Aug. 6 against Minnesota, will now instead pitch in Thursday's game on extra rest.
If you need additional proof that Toronto has been gripped by baseball madness by the local team's stirring run, note the healthy gathering of just over 39,000 that showed up for a weekday game against an opponent that historically is not normally a hot ticket.
After the top of the third inning, when highlights from the New York-Cleveland game from Cleveland was shown on the giant video screen, the patrons cheered with delight after seeing that the Indians had secured an early 2-0 lead.
As for Stroman, he was a phenom a year ago when he basically came out of nowhere to forge an impressive 11-6 record in his rookie season.
The Blue Jays were counting on him being a mainstay in the starting rotation all season before his unfortunate injury.
While the Blue Jays are delighted that Stroman has come so far so fast they also have to be very careful that they don't rush him into service too early.
In an e-mail exchange last week with a Toronto orthopedic surgeon who has not seen Stroman but has treated a large number of professional sports athletes, the doctor recalled what happened to former National Football League great Jerry Rice.
In the first week of the 1997 season, the San Francisco 49ers receiver tore his ACL.
In week 16 of the same season, less than four months later, he return to the field only to suffer a cracked kneecap in his first game back.
Rice later admitted he rushed back too soon. "I thought I was invincible," Rice was quoted as saying.
Baseball is not as rugged as football, but don't forget that when Stroman tore his knee up all he was doing was participating in a drill for pitchers fielding bunts.
In his radio interview Anthopoulos stressed that the club will not risk Stroman's career and that, should there be any setbacks, all bets of a September comeback will be off.